Michael Shonrock is now serving as an ex-officio member of the Kansas City Area Development Council (KCADC); attended first board of directors meeting at Union Station (June 12th).

Thirty-five (35) junior high school students participated in the annual Kansas Future Teacher’s Academy; Michael Shonrock served as the closing speaker (June 13th) and focused comments on Random Acts and Kindness (http://www.randomactsofkindness.org/).

The Alumni Association selected Will Ramsey, Leawood, to serve as the new association president; special thanks to out-going association president, Jason Fanning, Olathe.

Persistence pays off – prior to the KBOR meeting last week, met with Legislative Research to better ‘understand’ how the salary cap and longevity calculations were literally calculated. Found a $99,798 error in favor of Emporia State; Legislative Research will report the error to the Governor’s office.

Dual-reporting; the Executive Director of the Alumni Association, Tyler Curtis and the Executive Director of the department of Marketing & Media Relations, Umair Abbasi will now report to both ESU Foundation President DenaSue Potestio and ESU President Michael Shonrock.

START/TAP (Students Through Alumni Recruitment Teams/Teacher Appreciation Program), during 2012-2013, served lunch to over 2,100 educators from 35 different Kansas schools; kudos to our Alumni Association!

The MIAA recognized 155 ESU Student-Athletes for outstanding academic achievements for 2012-13; 19 were named MIAA Scholar-Athletes, earning a 3.5 GPA or higher while also achieving All-MIAA athletic recognition (19 ESU Student-Athletes were the most by a Kansas MIAA school, and second most in our 15-member conference).

Andy Tompkins and Michael Shonrock presented awards and certificates to the five (5) new inductees to the National Teachers Hall of Fame (June 14th); the day before, the NTHF held of groundbreaking for a new Fallen Teachers Memorial adjacent to the one-room school house ($40k of the $200k project cost raised to date).

The Now and Forever campaign has raised over $12M over the past year; the goal is to raised (cash, planned gifts, etc.) a total of $45M over the next 5-7 years.